[Bonus] A New Neurospicy Year | Neurospicy Black Girl

Join Alani as she reflects on her 2024 and discusses what she wants to work on for 2025. Probably the only good project in 2025...

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Tags:
#neurodivergent #neurodiversity #neurospicy #podcast #adhdpodcast #adhdproblems #neurospicyblackgirl #blackneurodivergent

Transcript

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[MUSIC PLAYING] Hi, I'm Alani. I'm black, female, and neurodivergent, aka I lost the genetic lottery. The only thing I could do is pull myself up by my bootstraps and live whatever life takes me. If anyone deserves to profit from my trauma, it's me. That's a life of a Neurospicy Black Girl.[MUSIC PLAYING] Happy New Year, everyone, and welcome to NeuroSpicy Black Girl. I'm Alani, and today, in this bonus episode, I'm going to talk about my thoughts of the new year and what I would like to do. I'm not going to say goals or resolutions because I don't want to set myself up for failure. Sometimes you just got to go with the flow, you know? In case you missed it, I am collaborating with the podcast Professional Pimpology on a double episode special that will be on both of our channels. Be sure to follow my Instagram @neurospicyblackgirlpodcast for up-to-date information. As I'm working on that episode, I will have released two bonus episodes that are more chatting about random or expanding on topics. Maybe instead of bonus, I'll call them NeuroSpicy Chat. Let me know what you think. Anyway, enough housekeeping. Let's jump into my thoughts for the new year. My 2024 was certainly a year. If you're into tarot, I feel like the card that best describes

my 2024 would be The Tower: 1:30

destruction and upheaval of structures and statuses and such. I have lost a lot. I've lost friends. I've lost a job. I've lost money. And I've lost the will to live a couple of times. However, I still gained something despite the many losses. I have gained a new community with BRIC. I've gained the confidence to pursue creative ventures like editing and this podcast. I have also gained new awareness about myself on what are my likes, dislikes, and I'm trying to be more attuned with my emotions. In this episode, I want to go over the things I want to improve on for 2025. Number one, community. With the results of the US election, I think I went through all five stages of grief all at once. At the acceptance stage, one thing that really came to mind is that I got to build a strong community, especially with other marginalized folks, especially other Black women, especially with other neurospicy Black women. Although anyone is welcome to listen to my podcast, heck, the more people that want to listen to my yapping, the better. I created this podcast with the goal of building a community of Neurospicy Black Girls. I have always felt invisible, unseen, and ignored with my intersecting identities. I hope to let other Neurospicy Black Girls know that they are not alone. While in the past, I have struggled in finding community, I aim to help build communities for the future. Number two, security/stability. OK, a lot of things could fall under this category. I'm going to start with the most glaring one, financial. I'm currently in a part-time job that barely pays enough to survive on, doing freelancing on the side, and have increased my credit card balance. I also got student loans. Honestly, talking about my finances makes me want to fake my death and live in Cuba. If the IRS is listening, this is a joke. I want to get a better job where I could be both financially stable and not compromise my mental health. I most likely got to return to corporate America, although you know they hate my ass. In case you don't, listen to the first episode of this show after this one. But with the experience I have with my previous job and my part-time job to an extent, I am more prepared to survive in corporate America. The other type of security/stability I want to prove on is emotional stability or security. Believe it or not, I have been attending therapy for more than a decade and it has vastly improved my life. One of the things that my current counselor works with me on is being more attuned to my emotions. She asks me about how I feel and to describe the physical feeling of my body, depending on the situation. On the latter part, I feel she does that because she knows I unintentionally forget or neglect how my body feels during an event where emotions are heightened. Your mental health and physical health affect each other and it's important to stay attuned to how our mind and body feels. Speaking of which, number three, physical health. For the record, I'm no Serena Williams or Simone Biles or Sha'Carri Richardson or insert another famous black female athlete here, but I know that my physical health needs to improve. High blood pressure runs in my family and my beloved grandma passed away due to complications with diabetes. Five years ago, I still can't believe it has been five years. Anyway, while I have not had any of those health conditions, knock on wood, that does not mean I don't wanna prevent them. Both diets and exercise have been hard for me. Diet because I am an emotional eater. I emotionally eat, I think, because it is the only thing I actually have control of in my life. Food won't betray me, it's always there. Especially fast food. Also, that tends to tie into my impulse buying. I know I am keeping the Grubhub economy alive. But yeah, I wanna improve my diet with more healthier options. I think I'll do an episode about my relationship with food and how my neurodivergence affects it. Now, the exercise thing. Luckily, I live in New York, probably the most walkable city in the United States of America. You unintentionally have to exercise, AKA walk, to get to places in New York City. However, I got two slight problems. Weak knees and plantar fasciitis. In case you don't know what the latter is, it's when this thick band of tissue gets inflamed and the tissue runs across the bottom of the foot and it connects to the heel, bones, and toes. People who have this may feel a stabbing pain in the bottom of their foot. Or both feet in my case. Whenever my friends and colleagues want to walk somewhere far instead of taking public transportation, I die inside. I just gotta push through the pain to get to the destination. If any of my friends wonder why I tend to walk slower than the rest, that's why. Also, poor stamina. Yeah, we gotta definitely improve this physical health situation. Number four, confidence and vulnerability. Being creative, when you put yourself out there, you are being vulnerable. That is tough, especially since rejection sensitive disorder is a biatch. Do I gotta censor that? In case you don't know what RSD is, it's essentially a crushing stab and pain you feel when you feel that you've been rejected in some sort of way. Disappointment on steroids, essentially. I talk more about it in my "Struggle to be Creative" episode. Also listen to that one after this episode. But yeah, I think being put in and then later forced out of a depressing job, a creative one ironically, was the motivation for me to put myself out there. I was silenced, ignored, and unappreciated in my last job. I honestly feel that most of my former colleagues treated me either like a robot slave or the quirky classroom pet. I think the latter has to do more of my physical qualities. I'm a short, chubby Black woman with a baby face and with a "Michael Jackson voice" according to one of my former colleagues. That may be a compliment or insult, depending who you ask. Either way, I wasn't being taken seriously. Masked and also unmasked. Nothing was gonna change. And even though I would have loved to voluntarily leave the job, I think the end of my production job chapter was the push I needed to be more confident in putting my creative work out there. I can edit, I can film, I can write, I can direct. I can nearly do it all. The only thing I need to do is to believe in myself and believe in my work. Ooh. So yeah, this isn't a New Year's resolutions thing because I'm not gonna set myself up for failure. This is more of a, "this is what I like to happen and we'll see how things go." There's probably a better word for it, but again, I'm just gonna see how things go. Thank you for listening to this bonus episode. I'm excited for all the new opportunities that I have for this podcast. I hope you can join me on my journey in growing this podcast. Links to support me are all in the description. Remember, it's okay to be human. Do what feels best for you. Do it next time where something new happens and it won't be boring. Bye.(upbeat music)(upbeat music)(upbeat music)(upbeat music)(upbeat music)(upbeat music)